5 who lured victims to work as male escorts held for kidnapping

Five persons have been arrested for allegedly kidnapping a man, who wanted to be an escort, and trying to extort Rs 10 lakh from a Hapur hotel.

Senior police officials of the district said the accused lured the victim through a newspaper advertisement, offering Rs 25,000 to him if he agreed to meet some “prospective” international female clients at a hotel in Hapur.

A senior official said when the victim called on the numbers mentioned in the advertisement, the accused asked him to email some his pictures. The police said accused, then, asked him to come to the hotel in Hapur. When the victim reached the hotel, the accused identified as Anil Kumar Yadav, Naim, Bhim, Mangli and Md Fakira, allegedly kidnapped him.

Investigators said to avoid getting caught, they used the victim’s mobile phone to make ransom calls to his family.

On October 6, the victim’s mother, a resident of East Delhi’s Farsh Bazaar area, complained to the police that her son, who worked as a salesman in a mobile repair shop in Palika Bazaar, had gone to Hapur in UP to borrow money from an acquiantance on October 5 and was missing since then. Based on which, the police started an investigation.

“Through manual and technical surveillance, we traced the victim in Hapur. We learnt that the accused had made a Rs 10-lakh ransom call to the victim's family for his safe release. The call was put on surveillance and the kidnappers’ location was tracked to village Mohamadpur at Palwara in Hapur. The victim has been rescued,” said a senior police official.

The official added that “During sustained interrogation, the accused confessed to their involvement in the said incident. They further stated that they used to lure their targets by advertising about escorting services in newspapers. They promised Rs 25,000 per day for escorting Indian or foreign female clients.”

“When a victim is lured, the accused used to fix a meeting. When he would reach to meet his ‘client(s)’, he was kidnapped. The victim, in this case too, was lured through advertisement,” added the official.